Our Loving Responsibility to Communicate
Communication is essential to any relationship, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. Our work relationships are no different. AND right now let’s face it, workplace communication is hard. But as in any relationship, we need to own our mutual responsibility to communicate with our colleagues. We do this out of love. Love for our work, for our team members, for our customers, and for our field and love for the results we want to achieve too. In short we care so we need to communicate!
Here are some practical ideas for communicating openly, actively, continually, lovingly.
First let’s talk about our essential Love Not Fear Tool that can be applied to anything, but in this case we will apply it to communication. Then I’ll share a big bouquet of organizational communication suggestions and interpersonal communication ideas. Take from the bunch what suits your needs!
Plan for Love Not Fear
Whenever I teach about increasing love and decreasing fear, I often share this simple tool you can use to plan to bring more love instead of fear into any situation, whether it is a challenge or an opportunity.
And here’s a step by step explanation for how to use this to plan your loving communication. You can do this at your desk at the start of a day or before a one on one. And as in the example here, you can do this for a major initiative.
1. First, form a representative Communications Guiding Group. Or work with the representative planning team from the previous step. Be sure that the group is truly representative of diverse parts of the organization, racial groups, positions, gender identities, etc. Take time to build trust in this group to support the next steps.
2. With your Communications Guiding Group, on a flip chart, google doc or Mural board, name the topic of concern. It could be anything. In this case: How should we communicate as we go forward to work?
3. Next, identify the people impacted by the Path Forward to Work: This might be primarily, team members. Secondarily, the list could also include customers, community members, stakeholders, and suppliers. Identify those who are particularly vulnerable in this process. Center them in your communication efforts.
4. Now, make a list of all the ways you can create fear for the people impacted when communicating about your new culture and operations. That’s right. Make that list!! What are all the ways your communication can create stress, exclusion, disrespect, mistrust, worry, anxiety, confusion? Write this down. It won’t be hard. We know what poor communication is and how it makes us feel. Access that. If you don’t know, ask those who are impacted. In fact, even if you think you know, ask them anyway.
5. Next, make a list of all the ways you can communicate to create love for the people impacted. How can you communicate to help team members experience trust, inclusion, participation, respect, appreciation, clarity? What will create connection, engagement, safety, and peace? If a decision is going to impact a particular group, then consider specifically how to involve them, how to gain their input in advance. Find out how to communicate with them in a timely manner, how to make sure they feel heard, how to gain their feedback during and after, how to learn and be responsive. Make a list of what would make communication loving and if you are unsure, again, ask. Notice if your past assumptions creep in and put them aside. Be brave and open to new communication possibilities.
6. Create a plan to put these loving communication strategies into action and to avoid the fear-inducing communication habits. Hold yourself responsible for following this plan, even when you hit a time crunch or feel pressured or think it won’t be a big deal. Stick with the plan for loving communication and watch your relationships of trust become stronger.
Next, let’s look at some specific ideas for Communicating with Love as an Organization and Person to Person. It’s important to pay attention to both.
Organizational Communication with Love
Let go of assumptions. There it is again. It’s amazing how often I hear, “That’s just the way it is.” But if we assume that communication is going to be bad, it will be. If we assume that people will never feel respected, trusted, included, heard, then we won’t find a way to communicate effectively. But that way might be new and different from the past.
Ask and Listen. Go out to those who are impacted and ask for their input. Don’t go to the same people or those friendly to your perspective. Seek out the views of many different people. And then listen to them. Make sure they feel listened and heard. Reflective listening, mirroring, writing down their ideas and comments. Thanking them for their time and tell them what will happen next.
Host communication forums. Open sessions should include Q and A, brainstorming breakouts, and idea sharing in different formats. Co-create and model norms for kindness, respect, assuming positive intent and owning impact. Set the tone with humility, appreciation and openness to all ideas.
Communicate reasons for a decision. After receiving input, a decision must be made. Aim for decisions to be made by those most impacted and with the expertise. And some decisions span the organization and must be made by senior leaders. When this is the case, make every effort to control your biases in the decision-making process. When communicating the decision, don’t just announce it. Instead, acknowledge the input and the merits of the ideas shared, express thanks and value, and share the reasons for the decision. Name and give credit to those whose ideas contributed to the solution.
Leverage multiple communication channels to listen and to share consistently. This could include landing pages, emails, apps, texts or DMs, video, Slack channels, Mural Boards, forums, Loom, Voxer, and more. Find out what your team prefers and use these.
Make communication fun or entertaining when appropriate. I’ve seen organizations embed Easter eggs, use gamification, create themes, feature team stories, write and share Haiku, use crowdsourced photos and examples, create visuals, and more.
Support effective supervisor communication. Supervisors are usually the most trusted source for information for team members, but it can be challenging for supervisors to consistently and accurately communicate information shared with them. If 10 supervisors sit in a meeting and take notes, they will each go away with 10 (or maybe more!) different versions of reality. This is normal. We all hear things differently. Plus supervisors may not be sure about what they are supposed to share. So make it easier for them. Give supervisors a Briefing Sheet to support their communication. Briefing Sheets provide a comprehensive, straight forward update on an issue for the supervisor or manager to use to brief their team. A Briefing Sheet describes the issue, what is known, what is not known, common questions and answers, and invites questions and feedback through different channels. Supervisors can collect any questions to share back too. Be sure to create a mechanism to respond to those questions.
Send cross-team ambassadors. Cross team communication has taken a hit with the use of remote work arrangements. While connections within teams are being maintained, crucial connections between teams are not as strong causing misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and impacts to customer experience. Make it a norm in your organization to send a representative to attend other team’s standing meetings to open up collaboration and information sharing. Welcome each other and the chance to build connections and solve problems.
Authorize feedback. Engage and deputize the Communications Guiding Group to bring feedback as a standing part of your communication meetings. Sincerely invite people to point out how communication is working as well as when communication is falling short. Don’t dismiss the feedback as unreasonable or impossible. Stay open and creative.
Appreciatively welcome feedback. Commit to welcoming feedback and to responding with respect and gratitude. Caution: If you can’t sincerely do this, then don’t invite feedback because you will do more harm than good. But if you can be courageous, open, and humble, you will help your organization immensely. In fact, this might be one of the most important things you do! Understand that team members take a risk to speak up, so be ready to say, “Thank You” no matter what. Even when it stings. Even when it comes roughly delivered. They are taking a risk for the greater good. Respond with appreciatin, listen, then take action. Remember: this is love in action.
Be transparent and humble. If you miss the mark when communicating, confess this. Newsflash: Everyone will already know but wont they won’t know until you admit it is that YOU know! Tell your organization, “I did this. I received feedback that I missed the mark. I am sorry. This doesn’t reflect what I want you to feel and experience. Here’s what I am doing to fix my communication. Please let me know if this helps and if there’s more I can do.” Reflect, learn, improve, try again. Repeat.
Interpersonal Communication with Love
In addition to the organizational communication, every issue or challenge also has human to human communication opportunities. Wherever we are in the organization, we need to each pay attention to building trust, strengthening connections, listening, and sharing as humans to build stronger relationships.
Human Connection: Continue to (re)connect with care as human beings as described in Step 1 of the Path Forward to Work. Keep up the norm of reaching out to people to ask, “How are you doing, really? Is there anything you need?”
Being Seen and Heard: Create opportunities for uninterrupted sharing and generous listening, for people to talk to each other to be seen, heard, understood, valued and appreciated - for SHUVA, as author Patty Beach says in the Art of Alignment.
Notice and affirm: Look for, notice, and show appreciation when people show up generatively, with openness, curiosity, and excellent communication skills. Look for those who don’t usually get noticed, who are quietly going about their work, consistently contributing, and supporting others. Notice this. Appreciate this. Make sure they are receiving good interpersonal communication and support too.
Check in at the beginning of meetings: A simple question like: “How are you arriving today?” or “How are you in this present moment? Is there anything you want to name that’s happening in your world right now?” Thank people for whatever they share and respond with compassion as appropriate. If someone is struggling, check in with them afterwards offering support.
Check out at the end of the meeting: “What are you taking away today?” or “How are you leaving today?” or “What seemed important for you today?”
Self-awareness and self-regulation: As a leader, pay attention to your interior condition before, during, after a communication event whether it’s a one on one or an all staff meeting. Be clear, purposeful, and planful. Prepare yourself to be present with meditative breathing and connection to your heart. Observe and manage your emotions, being authentic and in service of the greater good. Be aware of what are you bringing in, of what stirs up in you, and what you take away. Reflect, decompress, get feedback, integrate, and learn.
Use everything you’ve got: Embrace multiple options for interpersonal communication. Experiment to see what works best for your team and for different individuals; adapt to personal preferences when possible for email, zoom, old-fashioned phone calls, message platforms, text, writing, images, music, art, recorded video, one on one virtual coffee chats, or walking meetings, etc.
The Stakes are High
With so many people struggling, the communication stakes are high. Many people across organizations are feeling overwhelmed, alone, exhausted, overworked, and disheartened. And too often because of poor communication both interpersonally and organizationally, people feel abandoned, devalued, unseen, unheard, disrespected, and unappreciated after all they have done. They are experiencing their work as merely a transaction at the very moment when they need a greater sense of meaning, belonging, and value. This is becoming the tipping point when people leave.
But instead this can be the moment when we advance our interactions with each other, when we begin to embody more love in greater measure than ever before. We can throw off old habits and assumptions about communication and radically engage to create belonging, ownership, respect, and love. If we do, this will be a leap forward on the Path Forward to Work, and to making work more loving and human.
